God is dead…

You gotta love Wikipedia, right?

It is like the dirty, cheap version of the old fashioned encyclopedia.  It’s crack cocaine for the intellectual.  The other day I was getting my fix when I came across Friedrich Nietzsche.  What a fascinating man.  When I was in seminary, we would discuss some of his writing about the Apostle Paul and blah, blah, blah…  Here is what most of us remember.  Nietzsche was believed to have died from a possible STD (what a terrible turn of luck) and he coined the phrase, “Gott ist tot”.

This German statement is translated, “God is dead”.

What happens to you on the inside when you hear a statement like this?  I don’t know about you but this used to make me pissed and I had the feeling that I needed to defend God (because we all know that this is the “Churches” job, to defend a defenseless God.  I mean God just can’t take this shit anymore and someone has to pay, right?!!).  That was the way that I used to feel.  I feel differently now.  I also think differently as well.  And this is WHY I returned to this famous thinker, writer, poet, and philosopher.  I felt that I needed to see the world through his prism.  Why did he think and feel the way that he did?  And that is when I ran across a statement from him that freakin floored me.  A statement in Wikipedia that made me want to read more, to think more and to get off my lazy ass and do something with my God breathed life!

“Nietzsche claimed that the Christian faith as practiced was not a proper representation of Jesus’ teachings, as it forced people merely to believe in the way of Jesus but not to act as Jesus did, in particular his example of refusing to judge people, something that Christians had constantly done the opposite of.[123]”

Yep…he said it and you and I have thought it a thousand times!  I can say that Nietzsche and I are on the same side of the fence on this one.  Could this statement not be any more relevant if it were written yesterday in the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report?

We are making disciples of Jesus that don’t know who the hell He is and they surely do not act as He did.  This is where the “church” and I get into the “weeds” together, because I refuse to live my life in a way that isn’t like the way that Jesus did in the four gospels.  Jesus loved people and even gave a speech on how we are not supposed to judge others.  Jesus said that the “Kingdom is at hand” meaning that the clergy didn’t hold all the cards anymore.  Anyone could access God at anytime if they wanted to because the “Kingdom of God” was within reach of EVERYONE.

How did we lose this message over the years?

I visit many of these churches here in the Tulsa area and they are tired, uninspiring and worst of all they teach people to live safe lives.  These lives are hiding out in the safe confines of proper doctrine and are usually protected by their vacant auditoriums.  The response seems to be, if we can get more people to come to our church to hear the “Truth” then we will grow and the Kingdom will grow.  It is with this line of thinking that I ended my sermon last week with these words, “I don’t think God gives a rip whether our church survives.  I don’t think He cares whether Victory Center, Guts Church, Revolve Church, or any other church survives.  God simply does not care about our programs. He cares about people.”  Jesus modeled this and many other things that we will not go into now but you need to ask yourself a couple of questions.

The first question is, “If your church were gone tomorrow, who would truly miss it?”  I like this question because Tulsa would not miss most churches in this city.  It would be one less judgmental and angry voice that they would not have to deal with any longer. The people that are uninterested in church or God would not miss them.  Pretty much the only ones that would miss these churches would be the programs and the people that feed off of them.

Jesus responded in a very specific way in regards to the feeder system and it was POWERFUL.

Another great question is, “Am I living my life in the manner, tone or the spirit of Jesus and the way that He lived his life?  Are people coming to me with their problems, hurts or concerns or do they see me as just another judgmental, Christian asshole that has all the answers? Do people look at my life and want to know more, to know why I do what I do, respond the way I respond or do they avoid me by keeping it simple.  “Don’t look them in the eye or they might preach at me and tell me everything that THEY think I am doing wrong”.

So ladies and gents, take inventory of what your life truly speaks and read over that Nietzsche statement again.  I have come to the conclusion that God is not dead, not even close to dead but the churches integrity sure is.

Till next time…

Crappy Pastor